Government shutdown on horizon?

Plunging ahead along party lines, the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved a set of Republican-backed spending targets that break with the August debt accords by demanding more than $27 billion in additional savings from non-defense programs.

The 28-21 vote sets up a long summer of political skirmishing, all leading to what could be another government shutdown fight Oct. 1 when a new fiscal year begins and the GOP must come to terms with the White House and Democratic Senate.

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“The majority is not only reneging on an agreement. It is thumbing its nose at the rule of law,” complained Rep. David Price (D-N.C.). Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.) singled out the allocation for labor, health and education programs, saying it represents “a critical error” by Republicans and will require cuts of $6.3 billion below the already reduced funding for the current year.

However spirited, the debate most resembled the Enraged preaching to the Reluctant.

It’s no secret that Appropriations Committeee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) strongly disagreed with Speaker John Boehner’s decision to break with the accords set out in the Budget Control Act last summer. But under pressure from the right, Boehner felt he had no choice if he was to bring along the tea party and get a budget resolution passed this spring.

To a lesser degree, elements of the same tea party forces are now evident in the Appropriations Committee itself.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) joined with Democrats on Wednesday in opposing Rogers’s allocations — but on the grounds that the numbers were too high, not too low. And on a 44-4 vote Flake was joined by three other conservatives in a vain attempt to cut an additional $97 billion from the plan put forward by the chairman.

Indeed, if all four — Flake, Tom Graves of Georgia, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Kevin Yoder of Kansas — had voted with the Democrats, Wednesday’s tally would have been a razor-thin 25-24.

Going forward, the dimensions of the fight are best understood by comparing the House numbers with those adopted on a lopsided bipartisan vote last week in the Senate Appropriations Committee.